I Challenge You!!

Easy challenge though, if you have a yard, or a balcony, or a porch, build a square meter garden. Not enough room for a square meter garden, do a square foot or a hanging plant.

Pick whatever food you want to grow. Then grow it. Repeat again next year, and so on and so on.

http://www.uwsp.edu/cnr/gem/Training%20Program%20in%20EnglishWeb.pdf

Resolution?

Have you chosen a resolution for the new year? I'd like to suggest awareness.

Wake up and look around you. Think about self defense, not necessarily from punches and kicks. Look at the threats around you and decide how you are going to protect yourself.

If you were walking down a street and you noticed that the further you went the more you were in the wrong neighborhood, a neighborhood that would most likely shorten your life, wouldn't you turn around and get out of there?

So take a look at the neighborhood you are walking into now. Do you smoke? Do you have lousy food habits like I did two years ago? Are you sitting on the couch day after day without getting up and being active?

If you are doing those things you are walking into a dangerous neighborhood, you are shortening your time on Earth. You are taking years away from your life, years that your kids could have you and they won't. Trust me, even when they grow up, they will still want you to hang around for a few more years.

Is it worth it to keep walking down that road? Is it worth your life to hang onto those habits? Is a little more nicotine worth the grief of your loved ones? Is taking the easy path, not getting up and getting fit, worth the price?

Wake up, get up, get aware, move towards health and sustainability, change a few habits. You don't have to go insane with it, you don't have to go off the grid and have a sheep farm. Drive a little less, walk a little more, eat a little healthier. Make small changes.

You can't run a race without taking lots of small steps.

www.franklinkungfu.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/East-West-Kung-Fu/85287569502

Knowing When to Let Go.

Once, in sparring, my partner grabbed my arms with his hands. He smiled slightly, considering his advantage. I stepped back into a horse stance pulling him off balance, then kicked him in the gut with a lead leg sidekick. It was light contact, so he squeezed tighter. I shuffle stepped towards him, hooking my lead leg behind his ankle and shifted to a bow and arrow stance. This caused him to fall backwards. Still he held on, pulling me down on top of him. Now that I was on top, I freed my right arm and punched him in the side of the head, then freed my left and punched him in the jaw on the other side.

He didn't know when to let go, and so kept getting himself into more and more of a predicament.

Often life throws challenges, hurts, injuries and insults our way. There is a time to hold tight and fight, but there is also a time to let go.

Several years ago, my mother and father paid me a visit. My then fiancee, and now wife cooked them dinner. The reason they had come was to tell me that my Mom had been diagnosed with cancer. They had a plan for how to fight the cancer, but the odds were against her. The only thing in my power to do was to support her in her battle.

As time went on, the cancer progressed, there came a point when my mother knew the battle was lost. She chose to let go of it.

I got married at her house, three months before my planned wedding. My mom passed away a week later.

Part of me still holds on to the grief and pain. Part of me is still angry at that disease that took my mother from me.

Every time I feel that way, and find myself holding on to the anger, I have to remind myself to let go of it.

Anger won't bring her back, and it won't heal me.

I let go of the negative feelings over and over again. I hold on to the love she showed me throughout my life, to the memories, to all that she gave me. I hold on to all I learned from her, and I share that with my wife and children.